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Jellyfish from Applesauce Snack Container

I have been saving items for a craft – colorful socks with holes in them and plastic snack-sized applesauce cups. Finally I have a craft that uses them both, and we’ll make them with the kindergarten and first grade kids at the Family Nature Summit this July.

This craft was inspired by a similar jellyfish craft on Spoonful.com – however, that craft used the most beautiful yarn and ribbons – and I don’t know about you but I don’t like to use my expensive yarn and ribbons on a jellyfish craft. So I was looking for an alternative source of jellyfish legs.

To cut the socks into strips, the best idea is to snip off the cuff (makes a great hair elastic) and then start cutting in a spiral about a half inch wide. Keep cutting and cutting all the way to the toe – which likely is a hole now because these are old socks. Around the heel, you might have to do some creative cutting because there is more fabric in that area.

Then snip the giant spiral into legs – about 12 inches long should be great. I also found that I could pull on the long thin piece of fabric a bit, and it would stretch out to give more more length. In some cases, it even gave the legs some interesting texture.

This can be messy, as little bits of sock tend to fall as you snip, so do it outside or have a vacuum handy.

Jellyfish legs cut from old socks (and undies) – these could be used for rug hooking also

Step 2: Pick 10 legs from your collection.

Lay five in one direction and five in the other, overlapping them in the middle by a few inches. Take another leg perpendicular to those legs and tie a knot so you hold them all together, with half falling on one side and half on the other.

Laying out the jellyfish legs

Step 3: Drill a large hole in the top of the applesauce container.

I used a power drill, but you could also punch a hole with a nail and hammer.

Step 4: Paint inside the applesauce container with a thin layer of glue.

Rip up tiny bits of tissue paper and stick them to the glue to make it colorful inside the jellyfish body. Let this dry, at least a little bit, but it doesn’t have to be 100% dry to proceed.

Step 5: Get a white plastic lid – such as the one from a sour cream container.

I could have used googly eyes with glue dots but I am not a fan of either because they don’t re-use anything. So I decided to make eyeballs from a white plastic lid. I drew two big eyes with a thin rectangle of plastic hanging below the eyes. Cut the rectangle in half and bend half in one direction and half in the other.

Eyeballs made from plastic yogurt lid

Step 6: Use an exacto knife to put a slit in the applesauce container.

Poke in the eyeball tabs and fold them back. Tape them down with packing tape. Nice and solid.

Plastic eyeballs taped inside applesauce container

Step 7: Take the extra leg that is holding the other 10 legs together and thread it through the applesauce container hole.

Tie a knot so the legs don’t slip out, and tie one more knot so you have a loop for hanging up the jellyfish.

Step 8: Repeat 25 times.

Actually – you don’t have to repeat 25 times, but I did because that’s about how many kids I’ll be teaching this summer. That’s a lot of eyeballs!